It is known that by color developing a silver halide color photographic material, dyes such as indophenol, indoaniline, indamine, azomethine, phenoxazin, phenazine, and dyes similar to the above-described dyes are formed by the reaction of an oxidized aromatic primary amino color developing agent and couplers to form color images. In the system, for the color reproduction, a subtractive color process is usually used and for the process, silver halide emulsions selectively having sensitivities to blue, green and red respectively and color image-forming agents of yellow, magenta, and cyan each of which is in a complementary color relation with each of the above-described silver halide emulsions are used. That is, to form yellow color images, for example, acylacetanilide series or dibenzoylmethane series couplers are used, to form magenta color images, for example, pyrazolone series, pyrazolotriazole series, pyrazolobenzimidazole series, pyrazolopyrazole series, cyanoacetophnenone series, or indazolone series couplers are mainly used, and to form cyan color images, for example, phenol series or naphthol series couplers are used.
Now, each of the dyes formed from these couplers does not have an ideal absorption spectrum, in particular, the magenta and cyan dyes each has a broad absorption spectrum and/or has a side absorption in a short wavelength region, which are undesirable for color reproduction of color photographic materials. In particular, the side absorption in a short wavelength region has a tendency of lowering the saturation. As one means for improving the fault, it can be improved to some extent by causing an interimage effect.
The interimage effect is described, for example, in Hanson et al, Journal of the Optical Society of America, Vol. 42, pages 663 to 669 and A. Theils, Zeitschrift fur Wissenschftliche Photographie, Photophysigue und Photochemie, Vol. 47, pages 106 to 118 and pages 246 to 255.
It is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,536,386 and 3,536,487 and JP-B-48-34169 (the term "JP-B" as used herein means an "examined Japanese patent publication") that the interimage effect is obtained by using 4-thiazoline-2-thione compounds.
However, when each of these compounds is mixed with a silver halide emulsion for coating, after preparing the coating composition containing them, the compound causes a bad action with the passage of time and also when the silver halide light-sensitive material is used after storing the light-sensitive material for a long period of time, there occurs a problem of lowering the sensitivity, etc. When the compound is added to a layer containing substantially no silver halide emulsion adjacent to a silver halide emulsion layer, the above-described problem cannot be avoided.
On the other hand, a means of releasing a compound of emphasizing the interimage effect by the oxidation during the development process by using a DIR hydroquinone is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,379,529, 3,620,746, 4,377,634, and 4,332,878 and JP-A-6-308689 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). By these means, the occurrence of the above-described bad action after preparing the coating solution and the problem of causing lowering of the sensitivity after storing the light-sensitive material for a long period of time, which material is prepared by coating the coating solution are reduced and the interimage effect is obtained but these improvements are yet insufficient.